This holiday can be summed up in one word.

Books.

Lots and lots of books. Finally bought myself a copy of The Count of Monte Cristo and it was devoured in a couple days with not sleeping enough because the Count was keeping me up late at night. Should I be ashamed of not having read it before..? (Yes, seen the movies/series, but you know how different they usually are from the book.) Who knows. Takes time to get through everything...

But it was far more fascinating than I thought it would be, as well as somewhat more depressing. It doesn’t seem like Edmond Dantes is made a better person for hunting revenge, but less sympathetic to others, perhaps. A little harder. A lot angrier. But then you look at what he went through and can perhaps understand how part of his humanity would be stripped away, and how you’d have to abandon sentiment to be able to really make a serious quest for revenge.

But then if Dumas had set his character to forgive and forget, there would be no novel and that would be the end of it. So the bitterness is excused. To be honest, if I was imprisoned and then had the escape and opportunity with wealth presented by the Spada’s hidden box of riches, I think I’d be fairly keen to work on exacting some sort of revenge, too.

Although revenge isn't a good thing - in the end, it proved to be somewhat depressing. All the death and loss and rather saddening punishment of others, rather than the people who caused the arrest and imprisonment of Dantes just made the revenge less delicious. Plus the character of Valentine was so enormously BORING and such a simpering "Oh whatever shall I do!" little twit that I found it hard to be sympathetic to her at all and skipped over chapters with her in it.

*yawn*

But other than that, Dumas wrote it incredibly well - it just elicits so many mental images that at times you lose your breath with how caught up you are in the story and its vision.